How to Become the Master of Your Own Life

Goal Setting

You’ve done a lot of the work in the goal setting. I’m going to assume that some of you have a general direction in your life ’cause I know we have Strivers in this room. Is this true? My challenge is, how do I meet you on this fresh new chapter of your life who recognizes your level of enjoyment and momentum last last year can be approved upon this year. You can change this year. You can change this year at an ambition level you probably don’t have because you’ve never even seen or imagined or heard or fathomed the greatness of your destiny.

Beginning of Extraordinary Year

We’re going to start today with a very simple idea, and that is, if you’re going to have an extraordinary year, first, you’ve made that decision, right? You’ve made that decision because at some point, there has to be this very clear delineation, a Line in the Sand what we often call a demarcation line that every day forward is living into an extraordinary quality of life. That has to be a decision. It has to be an intention. Every single failure in my life happened because I was not intentional enough in that moment with that person, with that project, with that negotiation, with that video, with that audience. I just didn’t have that level of intention. That said, I need to be the best of who I am right now. Anyone getting an argument with your spouse or the kids lately and afterwards you’re like oo that wasn’t the best of me. Yeah, we need to limit that. Your children paid me to say that. The reason is, so often as we want an extraordinary quality life, we don’t have an architecture for it. You’re going to learn a very simple architecture for how do you set up and structure your life. Some of it will be mindset. Some of will be very tactical. So let’s work through and we’ll explain what we’re going to do today.

Starting with Desires

We’re going to start with your desires. How many of you think you have total about what you want at this stage of your life, raise your hands? That’s pretty good for this audience. Let’s go grow. That’s pretty good. You know I ask this at audiences around the world and you’d be amazed by maybe 10% raise their hand, which is kind of scary because listen to the question that you have clarity about this stage of your life. Some people know what they want to do next month. They’ve got an Excel spreadsheet of workflows. They’ve got Trello and Monday and some fancy way that they organize.

Clarity on Desires

Themselves on their fridge, they’ve got battle boards, they’ve got growth day, I mean they got it all and yet the drive isn’t there because they’re just actually lacking clarity about what they desire for this stage of their life. So let’s begin with that question: what do you want at this stage of your life? Let’s get some clarity about that. What do you want at this stage of your life? I’m going to help you learn some of the psychological architecture of that, but we’re going to work through that today.

Importance of Routines

The second thing we’re going to talk about is routines. Now here’s why most people don’t like their life: they don’t know their desires, and they don’t have any routine to constantly manifest those desires. Does this make sense to anybody? So, I’m not sure what I want, and so each day is victim to randomness. They don’t know what they want, so each day is victim to randomness. “I don’t know who I am, I don’t know what I want to feel, I don’t know who I want to become, I don’t know what I want to do, I don’t know how I want to love or communicate, I don’t know what my thing is,” and all of a sudden, so each day you just keep meandering. Now, the good news is, for those who’ve been through stuff like this before, I’m not that guy who’s going to say you need to figure out one definitive purpose statement for the rest of your life. I know many of you have done that coming into here. I just want to let you know that doesn’t work. Not to be flipping about it, but you’ve probably tried that before. Millions of people every year write down some purpose statement and go and be mean to people. Millions of years here—I mean, millions of people write down like we know even from corporate research that all those values that they put on the walls, over 80% of the employees can’t even name one of them. It’s like we can write the mission statements and the purpose statements and have everything down and it sounds good, but if we haven’t built the architecture of routine in to embody that, to manifest that, to make sure each day, week, month, quarter, and year has routines tied to our desires, that’s why you don’t feel like you’re making extraordinary progress. You’re doing many things, but those things aren’t attached to the real desires you have. Is this too much for the morning or you guys are here okay? Yeah, yeah, I kind of want to geek with you a little bit, and I promise we’ll go deep. I just kind of want to—I want to geek and give a basic framework here ’cause I know most of the world just did this today. Most of everybody watching just woke up this morning: it’s New Year, I have to write my goals, lose 10 lbs, make a million dollars, leave this. [Applause] [Applause]

Speaker note: When you throw out your slides in the morning, this is a full day of extemporaneous training, so this is a test: does Brendan Burchard know what he’s talking about? I don’t know, let’s see. You are watching my notes in real-time.

So your goals, many people—people started here but they didn’t do this or this, and worse, many people think they started here, think they started here but they didn’t. They started here. Ninety percent of Americans’ goals today that they wrote down were tasks, and they’re like, “How come my life didn’t change in March?” Because you wrote down some tasks for January. And this is what, as I talked about today’s session, I told you that you need to learn a different goal architecture. That’s what this is. This is an architecture, isn’t it? To understand how to advance your life. So many people wake up each day and you know how they begin their day? Down here. The vast majority of people begin the day here, that looks like this: pick up phone, check messages, check DMS, check email, see if there’s any dancing girls. It’s like, what? What? What are you doing? So many people, they’re throwing away their day to menial tasks without first understanding what they want. Then they go through the day doing tasks, but none of those tasks are routinized efforts to achieve their desires. Who’s ever achieved a lot but you didn’t feel fulfilled? Your architecture was broke. Does this make sense? I do this with so many incredible high-achieving people. They’ve got the achievements, but as you heard me teach before in high performance, there’s a difference between having achievements and being aligned. When you have the architecture right, you’re aligned in your efforts. When you have no architecture, you’re just doing this. And I would challenge everybody, just test me if I’m right: look at what you came up with for this year, and were you here or here or did you develop these stemming from these? That’s all. Most people don’t think that way. So everyone’s like, “How do you get under the head, you know, how do you get in the mind of all these high performers?” I’m like, “Oh, I just know this.” When I sit down with my co-coing clients, I don’t start here. Most life coaches sit down with their life, their coach, or their clients and go, “Uh, you know, what are your goals?” And they talk about goals and they make tasks, and they talk about goals, they make tasks. “Hey, you’ll do this by next Monday.” “Great, next Monday session, did you do the tasks?” And they’re operating in task land and they don’t understand where there’s no breakthroughs. They don’t understand where their clients won’t re-up with them. They’re living too low on the architecture. The reason you want to work with a mentor or a coach or somebody who’s achieved something beyond you is because they have a different architecture. And often today, what we’re going to do is we’re going to show you that all this stuff, all this stuff, you know, we’re

Desires and Routines

Themselves on their fridge, they’ve got battle boards, they’ve got growth day, I mean they got it all, and yet the drive isn’t there because they’re just actually lacking clarity about what they desire for this stage of their life. So let’s begin with that question: what do you want at this stage of your life? Let’s get some clarity about that. What do you want at this stage of your life? I’m going to help you learn some of the psychological architecture of that, but we’re going to work through that today.

The second thing we’re going to talk about is routines. Now here’s why most people don’t like their life: they don’t know their desires, and they don’t have any routine to constantly manifest those desires. Does this make sense, anybody? So I’m not sure what I want, and so each day is victim to randomness. They don’t know what they want, so each day is victim to randomness. I don’t know who I am, I don’t know what I want to feel, I don’t know who I want to become, I don’t know what I want to do, I don’t know how I want to love or communicate, I don’t know what my thing is, and all of a sudden, so each day, you just keep meandering.

Now the good news is for those who’ve been through stuff like this before, I’m not that guy who’s going to say you need to figure out one definitive purpose statement for the rest of your life. I know many of you have done that coming into here. I just want to let you know that doesn’t work. Not to be flipping about it, but you’ve probably tried that before. Millions of people every year write down some purpose statement and go and be mean to people. Millions of people write down like we know even from corporate research that all those values that they put on the walls, over 80% of the employees can’t even name one of them. It’s like we can write the mission statements and the purpose statements and have everything down and it sounds good, but if we haven’t built the architecture of routine in to embody that, to manifest that, to make sure each day, week, month, quarter, and year has routines tied to our desires, that’s why you don’t feel like you’re making extraordinary progress. You’re doing many things, but those things aren’t attached to the real desires you have. Is this too much for the morning or you guys are here okay? Yeah, yeah, I kind of want to geek with you a little bit, and I promise we’ll go deep. I just kind of want to give a basic framework here ’cause I know most of the world just did this today. Most of everybody watching just woke up this morning. It’s New Year, I have to write my goals, lose 10 lbs, make a million dollars, leave this.

Mindset and Task Setting

When you throw out your slides in the morning, this is a full day of extemporaneous training. So this is a test: does Brenan Bashard know what he’s talking about? I don’t know, let’s see. You are watching my notes in real-time. So your goals, many people started here, but they didn’t do this or this. And worse, many people think they started here but they didn’t. They started here. Ninety percent of Americans’ goals today that they wrote down were tasks. And they’re like, “How come my life didn’t change in March?” Because you wrote down some tasks for January. And this is what, as I talked about today’s session, I told you that you need to learn a different goal architecture. That’s what this is. This is an architecture, isn’t it? To understand how to advance your life.

So many people wake up each day and, you know how they begin their day? Down here. The vast majority of people begin the day here. That looks like this: pick up phone, check messages, check DMS, check email, see if there’s any dancing girls. It’s like, what? What are you doing? So many people, they’re throwing away their day to menial tasks without first understanding what they want. Then they go through the day doing tasks, but none of those tasks are routinized efforts to achieve their desires. Who’s ever achieved a lot but you didn’t feel fulfilled? Your architecture was broke. Does this make sense? I do this with so many incredible high-achieving people. They’ve got the achievements, but as you heard me teach before in high performance, there’s a difference between having achievements and being aligned. When you have the architecture right, you’re aligned in your efforts. When you have no architecture, you’re just doing this. And I would challenge everybody, just test me if I’m right: look at what you came up with for this year. And were you here or here? Or did you develop these stemming from these? That’s all. Most people don’t think that way. So everyone’s like, “How do you get under the hood? You know how do you get in the mind of all these high performers?” I’m like, “Oh, I just know this.” When I sit down with my coaching clients, I don’t start here. Most life coaches sit down with their life, their coach, or their clients, and go, “You know what are your goals?” And they talk about goals, and they make tasks, and they talk about goals, they make tasks. “Hey, you’ll do this by next Monday. Great, next Monday session. Did you do the tasks?” And they’re operating in task land, and they don’t understand why there’s no breakthroughs, they don’t understand why their clients won’t re-up with them. They’re living too low on the architecture. The reason you want to work with a mentor or a coach or somebody who’s achieved something beyond you is because they have a different architecture. And often today, what we’re going to do is we’re going to show you that all this stuff, all this stuff you know, we’re going to have to talk about mindset all day. All day we’re going to have to talk about mindset because how you’re approaching this is everything. For example, your mindset when your goal setting is everything. Otherwise, you’re in task land. Many of us never even got trained like what’s the difference between a goal, a routine, a desire, and a task? So we’re going to work through some of these. If this seems elemental, I know what I want you to do is workshop it, advance in your life. So meet me wherever you’re at. Some of you, you already got all this, but you’re really struggling with this piece, right? You know what to do, you know what you want, but your negative thinking and your self-sabotage continually slows your progress. Who’s ever been there this last year? Yeah, good. We’re going to solve that today. You excited? Oh yeah. Who’s pumped to be here on January 1st?

Surrender and Faith

I know this can sound a little intimidating for those who haven’t done work with us before or it sounds like, “Oh wait, I don’t know, am I ready to

do this work?” If you don’t do this work today, let me tell you what, one year from now, you have achieved a lot of tasks, but you won’t be happy. So if you’re watching online, I know you can vacuum the house, I’d rather you sit down with a journal. I mean it. If you’re that person who, like, casually listens to something, January 1st is not a casual day. January 1st, I like to think about like if you’re in the military, you’re planning a prolonged effort, this is the day you get to be in the tent with the maps, with the ideas, with the generals, and you are planning a significant initiative. This is not a day to just be happy. We’ll talk about how to get there. This is a day to be really strategic, to force some difficult decisions today, and to get in a place where you feel like in more command of your life. So you have that performance drive that you deserve at this stage of your life. Your drive every day should shock people. It really should. People should be like, “Oh my gosh, she’s so ambitious.” No, she’s just not scared. Oh my gosh, you get so much done. No, I just don’t distract myself. I don’t want to rip my life away. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you’re so productive. Well, I didn’t spend an hour on social media scrolling. It’s so simple. Some of this we already know, but the reason you’re scrolling is your mindset is broke. I know all my psychologist friends out there don’t call them broken. I didn’t say they’re broken. Their mindset is. Give me a chance. Hey, even Carol DW called it a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, assuming that we can fix the fixed one. Okay, that’s what we’re going to do today. But I also think, I think so much of this we can be strategic about, so much of this we can structure here and really make happen. We can force ourselves, we can find that discipline, that performance edge, that drive, those higher desires. I also think today we’re going to have a little bit of a conversation that might surprise you coming from, which is about surrender. Because sometimes we don’t know and sometimes we can try to control the architecture of our life, but the building’s fallen down around us, somebody leaves us, we get laid off, our best laid plans failed, and then what happens is we get all this anxiety and angst because we think we control everything. Now we’re mad at ourselves and we start shaming ourselves. We start speaking down about ourselves ’cause we think we have ultimate control. We forgot He has ultimate control. And for those who don’t have a faith or religion or a belief in a God, maybe the universe or astrology or physics or the cosmos might calm you down to realize there’s an incredible universe of galaxies floating all around completely outside of your control, that the bajillions of atoms beaming through you today have nothing to do with you. And sometimes you can just go, “Huh, had a good plan, had good intentions, put my best self forward, things are falling apart. I need to not bring negative emotional energy to that because that’s not even in my control.” It’s not even in my control. And if I can surrender the attachment to how things have to be so perfect in my life, I got a shot at happiness. Because some of you, you’re good at architecture, you’re good at mindset, you’re the high performer in your family, but you are also this high… You cannot calm down and everything causes frustration and you’re living a life in frustration, not peace, joy, drive, fun, flow, purpose. We got to get you back. Everyone say, “I’m here.” I’m here. Both hands up. Say, “I’m ready.” I’m ready. Listen, sometimes you got to surrender and know He’s got your next steps. He directs the steps. He’s got a plan that you can’t see. Show up faithfully again, summon the best of who you are. Show up faithfully again, summon the best of who you are. Show up, summon the best of who you are. Faithfully. And as my mentor and friend Paulo Coelho, who wrote The Alchemist says, “The whole universe will conspire to support you. There will be an alignment and an opening and a support that you didn’t even imagine you could ask for.” That’s what I meant. So often so many of the beautiful things in our life, we didn’t even ask for them. We didn’t even dream of them. I never imagined I’d be in LA with tens of thousands of people on my 15th January 1st and getting to do this as a job, as a career, as a joy. I’m having a great time with you guys. I’d like to take a moment to give a special shout out to all the people who are here in LA in this theater right now, for those who are watching at home, thank you so much. What I admire about this group that means many of these folks traveled on their New Year’s Eve to do the work in this room today. That’s amazing. And I always like to show so many people have unreal levels of dedication in this room, and that is our folks who traveled from outside the state to be here today on their New Year’s Eve. If you traveled from outside of California, would you stand up? Let’s give our friends who traveled and did the hard work to be here today a big round of applause.